Full-Body Scanners on Incoming Congress' Radar

Scanner industry books non-stop lobbying flights to protect its turf

ConsumerAffairs' founder and former editor, Jim Hood formerly headed Associated Press Broadcast News, directing coverage of major news events worldwide. He also served as Senior Vice President of United Press International and was the founder and editor of Zapnews, a newswire service for radio and television.
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Grumbling over weather-related delays this holiday
season temporarily displaced consumer complaints about the
full-body scanners that are being rushed into service at airports
around the country, but the debate is likely to resume as soon as
the snow melts.

Passengers' complaints – traditionally given
little more than lip service – may find a friendlier
reception among at least some of the incoming Republicans elected
to Congress. Those of the Tea Party persuasion have let it be known
that stopping government waste and protecting individual rights
– well, some individual rights anyway -- will be at or near
the top of their agenda.

For the defense contractors and high-tech industries
that have come to rely on a steady stream of lucrative contracts
from the Department of Homeland Security, this is about as
welcome as being pulled out of line at the airport for an
"enhanced" pat-down.

But fear not. The scanner-makers aren't letting their
guard down. They're hiring armies of lobbyists to plead their case
on Capitol Hill. The Washington Post reported recently
that top scanner manufacturers spent at least $6 million on
lobbying during 2010. As public opposition to the scanners grows,
it's likely to be an even bigger bonanza for the lobbyists, who are
often former government employees or Congressmen.

In fact, citizens who wanly pine for bipartisanship
on Capitol Hill need look no farther than K Street, NW, D.C.'s
fertile field where "retired" Republicans and Democrats graze among
the lush greenery sown by the companies that harvest billions
annually from the public coffers.

Odd couples

One such unlikely couple: former U.S. Senator Alfonse
D'Amato (R-N.Y.) and Linda Daschle, wife of Thomas A. Daschle
(D-S.D.), the former Senate majority leader. They labor in the
vineyards for L-3 Communications, a New York-based company that has
so far won about $900 million of TSA business for its airport body
scanners.

Then there's Michael Chertoff. Remember him? Not long
ago, Chertoff headed the Department of Homeland Security. After
leaving DHS, he worked as a "consultant" for Rapiscan, another
scanner-maker.

Chaffetz made jaws drop in 2009 when he introduced
legislation to ban whole-body imaging at airports, saying that,
“Passengers expect
privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to
display highly personal details of their bodies as a pre-requisite
to boarding an airplane.”

“Whole-body
imaging is exactly what it says; it allows TSA employees to conduct
the equivalent of a strip search. Nobody needs to see my wife
and kids naked to secure an airplane. At $170,000 apiece, we can
hardly afford the machines,” Chaffetz said back in April
2009.

Industry was quick to respond to
Chaffetz, sending up attack squadrons of lobbyists to argue that
the scanners provided the most reliable safeguard against terror in
the sky. Perhaps more persuasive was the Christmas Day 2009
"underwear bomber," a would-be terrorist who attempted to detonate
explosives concealed in his underwear on a flight approaching
Detroit.

Even Chaffetz was moved to change
his position. A few days after the Christmas Day incident, he said
he would support the machines being widely deployed.

No clothes

But notwithstanding the boxer-bomb
fears, privacy advocates and civil libertarians say the king has no
clothes.

They argue that the full-body
scanners will go the way of the "puffers," the short-lived devices
that tried to sniff passengers for explosive residues. They were
abandoned as impractical after the TSA spent $30 million on
them.

Among the most persistent critics is
the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, which has filed suit to stop the use of the scanners on
the grounds that the procedure is "unlawful, invasive, and
ineffective."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit has scheduled oral arguments in the
case for March 10, 2011.

In its opening
brief, EPIC argued that the federal
agency has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy
Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Video Voyeurism
Prevention Act, and the Fourth Amendment

Whether the new Congress is willing to fight heavy
headwinds to throttle back the flow of taxpayer money to the
scanner industry remains to be seen.

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